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Jan 23 A Reasonable Compromise on Immigration

Several months ago, Dr. Charles Krauthammer made a great video for PragerU entitled “Build the Wall!” In today’s political environment, this can be an incredibly polarizing statement. The left is quick to attack our character or tune us out when we say something like this. As a moderate conservative who generally opposed building a wall, I was quick to criticize the video when I saw the headline, but since I love PragerU and am a student ambassador with them, I decided to give it a watch. As PragerU has done so many times, the video changed my mind on immigration policy.

In half of the video, Krauthammer talks about the problem of having 11 million undocumented immigrants living in America. Of those, nearly two thirds entered the country legally and overstayed their visas. This means that about one third of them illegally crossed the border. That is still a lot of people. However, instead of calling for mass deportation like many on the hard right do, Krauthammer agrees with the left that it would be morally wrong to just kick everybody out. To get the left on board, he advocates that we let people whose only crime is entering the country illegally stay here, become permanent residents, and start paying taxes. As a punishment for coming illegally, he stresses that we should not allow them to become actual citizens, but that we should let their kids who are born and raised here and who become Americanized become citizens. This is not only morally right, but it should get the left on board with a bipartisan immigration approach that still secures the border.

The other half of the compromise is building the wall. This is designed to ensure that the problem of illegal immigration does not happen again to the same extent that we have now. The biggest opponents of the wall will argue that it either costs too much or that it will not be effective. The cost estimates for the wall not coming from the Senate Democrats are 12 to 25 billion dollars. That is pocket change compared to what we are looking to pay for illegal immigrants today.

The argument the left makes about the wall being ineffective is also laughable. Krauthammer’s video cites several cases in which walls have drastically reduced illegal border crossings. One of these is south of San Diego where the number of illegal border crossings dropped by as much as 95% after they built a wall. Another one looks at the wall in the West Bank where illegal border crossings dropped by 99%, from 16,000, to less than 20. You get the point. Historically speaking, walls have made a huge difference when it came to curbing illegal immigration since the beginning of time. It is not a bad idea to build the wall and secure the border, this way 30 years later, we will not have the same issues with illegal immigration like we did after Reagan’s Amnesty bill.

As the battle for border security takes place, let us stop fighting one another, compromise a little bit, and agree to some common-sense goals that anyone and everyone who loves America should be able to get behind. We live in the greatest country on earth, and every great country has a border. Let us stop fighting one another, unite, and secure it, while also showing some compassion toward the illegal immigrants who are living in America and just want to be a positive part of our society and culture.

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